


faster or greener

by copperiisulfate



Category: K (Anime)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-26
Updated: 2018-03-26
Packaged: 2019-04-08 10:45:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14103669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/copperiisulfate/pseuds/copperiisulfate
Summary: There’s one time Mikoto asks him, just once and only once.He’s sitting on the sofa while Izumo is wiping down the countertops before opening the bar for the day:“So, what’s in it for you?”





	faster or greener

There’s one time Mikoto asks him, just once and only once.

He’s sitting on the sofa while Izumo is wiping down the countertops before opening the bar for the day:

“So, what’s in it for you?”

Izumo looks up, brows furrowed.

“There’s fuck all in it for you, all of this," and he gestures around the empty bar, lit by the late afternoon sun. “Would ask if you had an angle, because you usually do with everything, but here, doesn’t really seem like–”

Izumo cuts into this with a sharp laugh.

“Oh,” he says, a quick swerve into saccharine, “you worried about me now?”

“ _Not_  what I said.”

Izumo doesn't bother hiding his smile. “Why, do I gotta have an ulterior motive to give a damn about you now?” And this, he makes easy, almost playful, almost singsong. It's an old game--maneuver-- _whatever_ he's gotten infuriatingly good at.

Mikoto started drinking early today. No particular occasion. Since the slate, it doesn’t have the same effect but some days, it's still a bit of a placebo or something. Or, it's what he tells himself, pushing himself to push on.

“Not just me though. Me, you’ve had forever. But this? Really what you wanted?”

Izumo answers his question with another. “Does it bother you?”

Mikoto shrugs, noncommittal, lights a cigarette, and that is supposedly the end of that.

 

*

 

Later, when it's dark out and quiet, and he can feel Izumo’s eyes on him, much like always, and maybe, he has finally learned to discern that look (or maybe, he’s always known but never wanted to admit it because of everything that came with it) –

“Just don’t want it to bite you in the ass some day,” he says into the rising smoke clouds as they stand, shoulder-to-shoulder, in the night, though knows that it's likely well past that point anyway.

“Want what?” Izumo asks, maybe–-no, certainly, to humour him by now.

“This. Whatever it is. You _know_.”

(What he means is: _Anything that comes near me, anything I touch._  What was the opposite of King Midas? Rather than gold, all will turn to ash, turn to dust. That’s somehow always been his thing, slate or not.)

Izumo looks away and his lips stretch thin around his smoke, a humourless grin. “Why don’t you," he exhales, "let me worry about me?”

Mikoto doesn’t say, _Like I let you worry about everything else?_  But his voice grows quieter when he says, knowing it will take them in circles (nowhere), knowing it all probably feels like a bad old stale terrible no-good fucking joke to Izumo by now, “How about just this once I pass on that?”

Izumo half-laughs and half-scoffs, crushes ashes under his boot. “Why? What do you plan on changing?”

Sometimes, it’s intolerable. Increasingly, all of the time. Increasingly, there doesn’t seem to be all that much time what with the way things have been going these days.

Mikoto turns and, in a flicker of motion, touches Izumo’s lower lip with the pad of his thumb.

“Never said I had plans.”

He kisses him there, once, quick, the taste of ash between them.

And he’ll regret it later, maybe, maybe, or maybe not, because life is too short and he won the lottery on that one too.

He dreams about it sometimes (all of the time), burning up, but also doing this–and sometimes, in the darkest moments, of taking this with him like he took the rest of this boy, bled him dry in every sense but the literal one (or, at least, not quite just yet).

“So we’ve accomplished nothing then,” Izumo laughs again, the sound more forgiving this time.

 

*

 

Once and only once, in the dead of the night, in the half-secret space between being face-to-face and breath-to-breath and chest-to-chest where everything feels liminal, surreal, as if it may never have happened outside of a dream, he confesses, “Would’ve stopped you long ago if I was a better person.“

Izumo presses his mouth to his lips, to his jaw, to his neck, says against his pulse-point, “Cross my heart when I say that I’m real glad you’re not.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> thematically, i've probably written this same exact story in different words at least a dozen times and...can't really change who i am so here we are.
> 
> title is a reference to frank o'hara's poem _animals_ :
> 
> we didn't need speedometers  
> we could manage cocktails out of ice and water
> 
> I wouldn't want to be faster  
> or greener than now if you were with me O you  
> were the best of all my days


End file.
